How Me and Petey Saved the World

Andrea Goyan is an award-winning author. Recent stories are available in Small Wonders, Intrepidus Ink, Dark Matter Presents: Monstrous Futures, Flash Fiction Magazine, and The Molotov Cocktail. You can find more of her words on her website www.andreagoyan.com or follow her on Twitter. "How Me and Petey Saved the World" is in Short Circuit #16, Short Édition's quarterly review.

Me and Petey didn't mean to break the world. Honest. We were just bored and looking to have a bit of fun. And you know, high school dropouts like us don't know anything about physics. Hell, we probably cut class the day Mr. Payne warned us about parallel universes. So, unlike the dangers of time travel, which everyone knows, we had no idea crossing back and forth across the multiverse could cause problems. And frankly, as time passes, we aren't even sure if our recollections about how things were before are even accurate.
 
But the scariest part about the entire situation was the fate of humanity fell into the hands of a couple of stoners. Though Petey says why not? We're human. We bleed red like everyone else—well, like everyone else before we broke things. Now, humans all bleed blue like they do on the other world. Something about there being copper in our blood. Don't matter. Blue's as good as red, and keeping it inside your body, whatever the color, is still the point. That ain't changed.
 
The door to the other world isn't really a door, and I don't think we'd've even found it if we weren't high at the time. The entrance appeared next to where the parking lot meets the outer boundary of the town's baseball field. Just looked like shimmery air. At first, we thought the joint we'd smoked must've been laced with some awesome hallucinogen. But it wasn't the weed. And after our first trip to the new world—real trip, not drug trip, we could find that shimmering spot stone-cold sober. Which was good 'cause we both lost our hankering to get high. Which might've had something to do with the blue blood.
 
The other world's pretty much the same as this one. Same yellow skies and purple water. Their mountains are green, which is so weird. Though Petey says, he feels like maybe our mountains used to be green, too. Guess we'll never know. We didn't run into our other selves—I think that crap's all science fiction mumbo jumbo. But we met some girls; when Petey's around, there're always girls, no matter what universe we're in. And over there, even I was pretty hot shit, coming from another planet and all. So, you know I lost—well, maybe it don't really count if I lost my virginity on another world.
 
Ha! It does, too, count.
 
Anyway. The first time we come back, things seem the same, except for, you know, me losing my... But each time after that, we noticed changes. Like, I have this nagging feeling I used to have a sister. And Petey swears his dad was a doctor, not a mortician. So, we made a pact to stop going. But those girls, man, oh, man. Well, they are all-caps HOT. I mean, we're just red...I mean, blue-blooded males. So, we kept going, but not like every day. We kept it to once a week.
 
And then. Well, things got much worse when we brought the girls back here. They wanted to see our world, and we couldn't say no, 'cause, like I said—HOT. Thing is, they refused to leave. And worse, they didn't want to be our girlfriends anymore.
 
So, we did something neither one of us would've thought possible. We went to find Mr. Payne, the physics teach, to ask how to fix things. But see, no one had ever heard of the man. Mind fuck, right? Makes me think I probably did have a sister once upon a time. But I guess it's no big loss. It's not like I miss her.
 
So, me and Petey confab about ways to stop the changes. There's a sort of in-between place between worlds. I call it a birth canal, which Petey says is very girlie of me. Petey says it's more like an umbilical cord. Fuck him, whatever. We decide we need to destroy that passageway.
 
Petey's dad's a structural engineer... and yeah, Petey's pretty sure his dad used to be a mortician. Anyway, lucky for us, I'm a dropout who aced chemistry. So Petey learns where his dad stores the blasting materials they use to demolish hillsides. Turns out to be pretty easy to steal the dynamite.
 
On our way to sever the worlds, we stop for a snack at a 24/7. 'Cause, you know, we don't need to be high to have the munchies. Anyway, the girls are there with two frat-boy football players. We tell them that after tonight, they won't be able to go home. They laugh and tell us to fuck off. One fratty wraps his suckered arms around my girl's waist. And my stomachs flip-flop, remembering how it felt the first time we'd suctioned together. Petey drags me away before I cry.
 
Planting explosives is easy, and we're safely back on our world when we light the fuse. We don't see or hear anything, but the shimmer vanishes. Door's locked. Adventure's over.
 
Sure, there're some permanent world changes. But Petey and me figure our high school teachers are to blame. If physics class hadn't been a snooze-fest, none of this would've ever happened.

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